Diary of a Calais volunteer — 1
Earlier this year, my boyfriend and I decided to spend five days volunteering at the refugee camp in Calais, driving via Dunkirk on the way to and from. To maximise our contribution, we did some fundraising among our family and friends via GoFundMe, and exceeded our target of 200 AUD nearly 10 times over. This meant that we could buy supplies on the ground according to need. These are my daily updates to our donors.
Supply drop at Dunkirk
1,151 AUD buys you nearly 800 Euros, which goes a long way when you’re buying beans. We filled our first shopping trolley (and the car) up with litres and litres of cooking oil, stacks of tins and so many carrots, and despite best efforts, only managed to spend 136 Euros.
When we asked the woman co-ordinating the kitchen at Dunkirk what we should bring on our way back out, she paused moment and said “Eggs.” So we’re going to call back through on our way out in a few days and we’ve decided to buy as many eggs as humanly possible.
We gave a short lift to a refugee from Iran called Younis — he’d been pushing a trolley full of baguettes towards the camp and showed us the way — he’s been in Dunkirk camp for two months.
We only had a brief impression of the Dunkirk camp. The part we saw is housed in old warehouse type buildings and the kind of semicircular military tents you see in army barracks. The vibe was of organised, industrious chaos, with a free ‘shop’ set up with surplus supplies, a ‘snack shack’, a tea and coffee van, some kids playing on bikes, a game of chess. Lots of youngish guys just sitting around though. It didn’t occur to me how boring just surviving must be after a while.
We’ve now checked into our hotel and are about to head out to do our second shop for the camp at Calais. We’ll be able to fit more in our car without our own luggage getting in the way.
First day at Calais
Today we were initiated into operations at the central warehouse run by the charity L’Auberge des Migrants (Roughly: Home for Migrants), one of the bigger groups looking after donations of food, clothing and building materials.
The warehouse is gigantic, and the land it’s on also houses some of the long-term volunteers in a little caravan village. It’s tucked away in an industrial estate, and the address is kept a secret until you confirm your attendance as a volunteer — some of the locals aren’t too keen on proceedings, so they like to keep the location as quiet as possible. It’s actually a short drive from the main camp.
We arrived to find around 30 volunteers — mainly young people who looked like they were student-ish age, and retirees. We started with a warm-up — at the time it felt like being back doing student theatre, but now I realise it was because they were limbering us up for a day’s full-on labour.
But first we unloaded carload #2 for the kitchens. We went to Leader Price, a discount supermarket last night and had the time of our LIVES spending 360 Euro on two trolleys of supplies. The baffled security guard asked if the exchange rate between the Pound and the Euro was particularly good at the moment — he thought we might be leveraging it to do an extra cheap supply shop. The staff seemed quite impressed that we were taking the supplies for the asylum seekers, so I suppose we were lucky that we didn’t run into anyone who was against it. I guess we’re keeping their employers well in business though.
A few stats from that trip: we bought 1,200 tea bags, 191 tins (ranging from sardines to 800g tins of chick peas), 12kg of salt and 24 litres of UHT milk. After we finished up at the warehouse today, we returned to Leader Price to do another load, bringing our expenditure to a total of 706 Euro. Our new fundraising total equals about 950 though, so we’re not finished terrorising the checkout attendants of Calais yet.
Anyway, back to the warehouse. What I didn’t realise is that this is also a centre of operations for efforts in other camps (there are smaller camps around, too), and also for people still in Syria. The big news of the day was that we were filling up a shipping container of clothes that some brave soul was driving there.
Have you ever seen a container truck from the inside? Those things are ENORMOUS. It took about an hour of 40–50 odd people working in chains and playing box tetris to fill it. To pass the time, we sang some songs (the theme from Tetris; some of the Oompa Loompa songs from Willy Wonka; What shall we do with the drunken sailor? [‘Put him in a box and send him to Syria!’]), and of course: “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go.”
For most of the day though, we were sorting clothes to go to the residents of the camp. There’s a mountain of clothing donations that need sorting, and they’ve got an exceptional system for sorting, distributing and recycling inappropriate items (seriously, there were some weird things in there — like used lacy underwear).
This may sound obvious, but the charity puts a lot of care into everything they do. The vegan lunch we had from the kitchens was amazingly tasty, just made of lentils and rice and veggies, and flavoured with some boss spices.
The sorting system for the clothes reflects the fact that most of the camp’s inhabitants are middle class men in their 20s. It’s not just about keeping them warm and clothed, it’s also about making sure that they don’t feel embarrassed or unhappy in what they’re given to wear. Anything that’s stained or that has holes is recycled. They dislike corduroy and turtle necks. Light-coloured trousers are unsuitable, as they get dirty very quickly, as do wide-legged tracksuit bottoms (elasticised at the bottom only). Maintaining happiness and dignity is the primary objective, and they the best they can within their means.
The most poignant thing we learned sorting clothes was the reason why we couldn’t pass on any outerwear that’s bright, particularly fluorescent or white, and it comes down to why people are there in the first place. They’re searching for an opportunity, under cover of night, to make a break for the UK in a lorry or a train. Among the asylum seekers, this is known as ‘chance’, and eye-catching clothing ruins chance.
On a lighter note, our long-curated Spotify playlist ‘Mmmbop’ was pumped out of the impressive speaker set-up in the warehouse when spirits were flagging at the end of a long day. It was of course a big hit among the millennial volunteers, and we even found our ‘music soulmate’ (self-identified) who appreciated the inclusion of One Direction and other seminal boy bands.
And we are POOPED. We’re about to kick back and microwave some ready-made lasagnes, because that’s how we roll. If you’ve read this far, thanks.
If you want to volunteer or donate, start with the Calais — People to People Solidarity Facebook Group to find out what’s needed.
